2023 & 2024 Riding Journey

#3 Groundwork with Amara

So, once again, my lesson was rescheduled to Wednesday because of bitter cold.  Only this cold had lasted for three (or more, depending on how you count it) days, and none of the horses had been ridden during that time.

James, Vivie, and Kiley were all there again.  Vivie worked with Rugar, James with Nova, and Kiley with Cordell.  I got to work with Amara.

Amara is the one that I call "sweet potato" and she is sweet.  She's just, well, green and doesn't know a whole lot yet.

I groomed her off real quick and then took her into the arena.  I worked her around on a circle for a bit.  She wanted to say closer to me than we would prefer for a lesson horse (as my trainer said) but she was maintaining a nice bend while doing it.  In some cases, it's okay to have a horse close to you, but you always have to aware (especially if it's a horse you don't know) of them kicking you.

Anyhow, my trainer told me at one point to stop her to reward her for maintaining that nice shape, but at that moment Amara decided to look off elsewhere and lost the shape.  So we had to go back and get the shape again, and this next time I asked her at a good time to stop.

I think after that (or maybe it was before?) I also worked some changes of direction with her.  She was good with them, but she was jumpy / reactive.  She was responsive, but a little too responsive / anxious about responding, if you know what I mean.  When I stopped her and was talking to my trainer afterwards, I also noticed that she was doing that thing where she blinks and her face twitches all the way down the side of her face to her nose, which means she's not relaxed.

My trainer asked me what I thought she needed after working her for a bit.  I said that that I thought she needed to relax and not be quite so jumpy.  My trainer gave an explanation for that.  She explained that Amara had been started twice.  First by someone else, and it was not a good one, and then restarted by herself.  But when my trainer had restarted her, she hadn't known the things she does now, and so now she's having to go back and fill in the blank spots / correct things.

She said that sometimes, when a horse realizes they can make pressure release and change a situation, then they will get that jumpy / extra responsive, because now they know that if they yield to pressure, they'll be rewarded for it, and that they can make pressure go away if they find out what we want.  So, that may be part of the reason Amara was a little jumpy.

Anyhow, my trainer said we had several options for calming her.  We could use fatigue, but that was more for horses that were already wanting to zoom around.  Amara wasn't, so to use fatigue, we'd have to get her 'worked up' and push her, which was not what we wanted.  Then another option was that we could use whole body movements, like asking her to step with the outside foot over a pole on a circle, (which is shoulder - in on a circle), or leg yielding along the fence.  Finally, if the horse was being particularly jumpy with one part of their body, like their shoulders or hindquarters, we might focus on that and do a movement over and over that moves that body part until they finally do one that's smooth.

So, after laying that out, my trainer asked me what I would do if she wasn't there.  I said I'd do the whole body movement, because there was no particular body part she was being jumpy about, it was just that she was over responsive as a whole.

My trainer agreed and said that the best one to do would be leg yielding along a wall.  Now, I've never leg yielded a horse along the fence from the ground before, so my trainer took Amara from me to demonstrate.

She said we were looking for Amara to settle into an angle, whatever it was, hold it, and keep her own steps rhythmic, to start to find her own way with her feet.  Once she died that, I was to turn away from her and bring her hindquarters around so she followed me.  I wasn't to wait too long to do this, otherwise we might loose the movement and have to find it again.

When leg yielding along the fence, you stand where the inside leg would be.  The horse is facing into the fence at an angle and you push them along with your body.  It's kinda hard to describe on paper but it makes sense when you're doing it.

My trainer, of course, made it look easy, but when I started to try it, Amara would turn into the fence and face me, with her hindquarters going to the fence.  I wasn't sure what to do about this the first two times it happened, so I took her off the fence and tried again.  

But then my trainer helped me out.  Whenever Amara started to do that, she had my raise my hand to her eye and walk into her to push her back out the way she should be going, even if she was parallel to the fence.  Amara didn't like this much at first.  We had to do this several times before I started catching her earlier and kept her from going all the way.  My trainer talked me through this first round and helped me out.  Then she left me alone to try it again and fiddle with it several more times.

It took several more rounds but I began to get the hang of it.  We'd start off down the fence, and sometimes she'd face me and I'd correct her, or sometimes I'd ask her to move her hindquarters over some, and we'd  just keep going until I got something that was better / looked decent and then I'd turn away from her to end the leg yield.  We'd go back to the starting place and do it over again.  Amara didn't turn into me as much and we were more consistent about the angles.  We started to get some decent stuff going that direction.  My trainer told me I needed to walk along the fence when I turned from her, instead of out into the arena, and that also when I got something good, to go do some trot transitions on a circle.

Soon after that, we got something good, and then we talked a bit before doing the trot transitions.

My trainer told me that I needed to not be afraid to make contact with Amara's face and walk into her to make her turn around and stop her from facing me.  She even demonstrated by coming up and giving me a shove on the shoulder, haha.  She said that once a horse figured out you weren't bluffing, then they would take you seriously.  But I was bluffing, and I had to stop it.

We did some trot transitions going both directions on the circle.  Amara was a little slow about getting up into the trot, and also didn't want to hold it for long, so I worked on that and it got better.  Then we went to try the leg yielding going the other direction.

This direction was better in that we didn't have so many episodes of her swinging her hindquarters to the fence and facing me.  When we did, I was able to correct her easier.  And again, we were left to our devices for the most part.  My trainer, near the end, told me I could end the session of leg yielding when I got something I was looking for.

The leg yield was not as perfect as I wanted, and I was tempted to keep drilling on it. But I had a feeling we'd only get stuck in rut, so I quit before I wanted to.  Still, we were much better than we'd been in the beginning.

My trainer said that it gets harder when you have to start making judgement calls on your own, and that's very true.  But it's something that you have to learn, and it's also a sign that you've advanced when you do start to learn it.  Overall, it was a good groundwork lesson with Amara, during which I began to learn a new tool.

Actual lesson 1/17/2024